Tag Archives: the Sports Guy

I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this before, but when I was in the second grade, our teacher, Mrs. Cosgrove, she used to show us these educational videos every now and then. I’m sure teaching a bunch of little kids has got to be a physically and emotionally draining way to spend a day, so I don’t really begrudge the fact that she’d phone it in once in a while by turning on the TV and telling us to be quiet. But while everyone else would get all excited whenever the maintenance guy would knock on the door to wheel in one of the school’s TVs, my heart would stop.

I went into school every single day with a pit in my stomach, a constant fear. Would today be the day? Because there wasn’t a schedule. It wasn’t like, “OK class, it’s 10:30 on Wednesday, so you know what that means, educational TV time.” No, it was just whenever the teacher felt like it. Sometimes we’d go months without so much as a spotting of a VHS tape. But then maybe we’d watch TV for two or three days in a row. I couldn’t rest. There was no escape from the fear. Every day had the potential to turn into a TV day without any warning.

And it wasn’t the TV that I was afraid of, it was this one particular show that we had to watch. It was called Storylords. It was about this little kid around my age and his younger sister. Each episode, they were visited by this wizard guy from another dimension. His world was overrun by this crazy warlord named Thorzul.

Thorzul as a screen presence wasn’t that scary. It was really bad, cheap acting, just some guy in a black cape. He kind of looked like my dentist. But it was his character, this dictator of that other world, he had powers. He could turn people into stone. I’m not sure that it was a central part of the plot, I’m pretty sure the show was all about teaching kids how to read, but every episode, it’s like they didn’t have anything else to fall back on, and so he’d zap someone into a statue.

And I was terrified. Like sitting there, sweating bullets, looking around at all my classmates, unable to understand how they were all just sitting there, smiling, watching TV, all while I was trying my best to keep it together, to not freak out and start screaming, terrified.

I’m a little fuzzy on the specifics of the show, but for whatever reason, that wizard that I was talking about earlier, he would always need the kids’ help. So he teleported them to his home dimension where they’d have to confront Thorzul and, well, they’d have to basically take an oral spelling and grammar quiz. “Spell this word correctly or I’ll turn you into a statue! Just like I turned these two guys into statues!”

And yeah, they always got it right, and then not only would they be spared an eternal hell, a life trapped in living stone, but the other statues would usually be restored back to life also. But man, for whatever reason, the idea of it, of being forced to ace a pop quiz, the pressure of getting it wrong, of feeling my insides harden as my skin turned grey. And what would it look like? What would be the last thing I’d see before my eyes cemented over? Would I be dead? Or just trapped forever?

I’d barely make it through each episode, just quivering in my seat, hands clenched tightly around the sides of my desk, unable to shake that feeling of having just been mentally violated. What was the point of these videos? Why was my school trying to reinforce my already pretty decent reading and writing skills by terrorizing me into never making any mistakes?

And so that’s what most of my year was like, just praying that it wouldn’t be a TV day, that I wouldn’t have to watch Storylords.

But it always happened, maybe not immediately, but eventually, there’d be a knock at the door, everyone would get all excited, the maintenance guy would drag in that set, an old fashioned box mounted on top of a rolling dolly. It all came to a head one day midyear, Mrs. Cosgrove popped in the Storylords VHS, and instead of the usual introductory exposition, this particular episode skipped straight to the terror.

The kids were sitting in school, in a classroom not that different from the one I was currently sitting in. Then, a flash of light, and there they appeared, Thorzul and his little henchman, they had somehow crossed over into our reality, taken the fight to us, a surprise offensive. He skipped the normal pleasantries and used his powers to partially turn the little boy into stone. He could look around, but he couldn’t move or talk. Then the dark lord turned to the sister, “All right! Answer my phonics questions correctly or your brother’s a statue for good!”

At this point I couldn’t take it anymore. I broke down and started screaming, running out of the classroom and straight into the boys’ restroom. Crouched in the corner with my hands covering my eyes, I tried to get myself together, to stop myself from crying at least, hoping that nobody had seen where I’d run.

But of course they knew where to look. And it was a huge deal. Mrs. Cosgrove was like, “What’s wrong with you?” completely unable to make the connection between Thorzul’s wrath and my little episode. They took me to the principal’s, my mom was called in. I remember sitting there in the office while my mom and Mrs. Cosgrove watched the program that had caused my rather extreme reaction.

I felt like such a baby. And this wasn’t the first time my mom had to be called in to quell an emotional panic. A year earlier, one of my classmates brought the whole room some candy for her birthday. I was passed this little yellow box of JujyFruits. I’d never seen this candy before, and on the box was this illustration of a cartoon girl. It was a poorly drawn almost stick-like figure, pale white skin with a little squiggly line for a mouth. For whatever reason, I made eye contact with the drawing and this wretched creature pulled me into some sort of a void. I couldn’t identify the feelings at the time, but they’re the same exact responses I get now as an adult when I’m occasionally lying in bed wide-awake at four in the morning thinking about how someday I and everyone I know will …

Well, there’s no reason to get too morbid here. But it was that same feeling again this time with Thorzul, only now the fear wasn’t as abstract as it was the year before. I sat there and worried if I was going to be in trouble, if all the other kids were going to make fun of me for running out of the classroom.

But no, my mom finished up her talk with Mrs. Cosgrove, she took me home, and that was it, really. There wasn’t anything to talk about, and nobody in school mentioned it when I came back the next day. Also, we never watched Storylords ever again. So there was that, I didn’t have to sit there and worry every day, that was definitely a relief.

Anyway, the only reason I bring this up is because, well, I was just imagining what it’s going to be like when you finally give me a call and ask me to write for Grantland. I thought, what if Bill asks me one of those interview questions, like, “What’s your biggest weakness?” or “Tell me about a situation in which you overcame a great obstacle.” And I thought about this, about the second grade, about Storylords. That story would work for either of those questions. Right? Because I overcame it. Or, I caused a huge scene and got my way. That took initiative. Right? Don’t you want that in an employee?

Hey Bill, I can’t really concentrate on my writing, not lately. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’ve got this clicking in my jaw. It’s like, I was chewing some gum last week, everything was fine, but then there was this one chew where my jaw just, well, something happened, I can’t really describe it. It’s almost like the jaw bones, it’s like they missed, like wherever they’re supposed to connect when they go up and down, I don’t know, maybe something slipped out. But I was chewing so fast, it’s not like it just popped out. No, it popped, but then I continued to chew. And I don’t know how you chew gum, but this was like a hard chew, all of my jaw strength clamping down on a joint that, as I far as I can guess, was now totally out the socket. And that hurt, there was like an audible chnk sound, an intense pain that shot up the side of my head.

Right after that it started swelling, and I couldn’t close my mouth all the way. That was for like two or three days, and while it’s a little better now, there’s still some stiffness, my bite hasn’t really gone back to the way it was. And the clicking, that’s what I was getting at, even when I do manage to warm up my jaw and get a good bite rhythm going, there’s that click, like I’m imagining something just a little off, each time I chew I can hear it, click, click, click.

Do you think I should go to the dentist? I’m worried that they’re going to try to sell me on some experimental procedure that hasn’t really proved its effectiveness in the general public. From everything that I’ve read online, it’s like, if you have a jaw problem, just deal with it. Modern medicine hasn’t yet come up with a consensus on how best to deal with these issues. There are so many horror stories of people enduring painful surgeries and long recoveries, only to have things wind up worse than when they started.

And yeah, one obvious solution would be to just stop chewing gum for a while, maybe give my body as good of an interrupted chunk of time as I can string together to really try to heal itself. But I love gum. Which is a dumb reason to keep chewing, I get it, but it’s just that, I’m not entirely convinced that the gum chewing was the problem. I keep having this idea that something just got slightly out of whack, like a door that’s just barely off of its hinge. And I don’t know, I have this feeling like if I could only knock it back into place.

That’s crazy though, right? Hey Bill, I hate to change topics abruptly here, but the other day I was riding my bike and, I don’t know what happened, because I ride my bike every day, it’s one of those skills that I take for granted. So you can imagine how surprised I was when my right foot slipped off of the pedal. I was wearing shorts because it had just started to get nice out, and so the inside of my ankle made contact with the chain.

At first it didn’t look like it was going to be that bad, but then these thick globs of blood started bubbling at the skin, it was like it was condensing at the surface from the inside. By the time I pedaled home, the crimson stain on my sock was pretty noticeable. While the cut itself wasn’t that big, it was definitely deeper than just your average scrape, and so I don’t know, should I go and have it checked out?

It’s not bleeding anymore, I mean, it was a few days ago, but it’s really hard to clean out. I put on this invisible skin spray, but I feel like that just added an extra layer of gunk, and so I can’t tell if this thing is healing properly, or maybe there’s just too much liquid bandage accumulating around the edges of the cut. I don’t mind winding up with a scar, I mean, I know you’re supposed to get stitches within like three or four hours. But I just can’t shake the feeling like this thing is going to get infected, I’m not going to be paying attention, or I’m going to convince myself that it’s OK when it’s not OK, and the next thing I know, well … do you know that Calvin Coolidge’s son died from a blister? Yeah, he was just playing tennis, got a blister, didn’t tell anybody about how bad it was getting, and then he was dead. Sure, that was right before antibiotics, but if I don’t go to the doctor, it’ll be like I’m living in the early 1900s, like this thing is going to get worse and worse until it’s too late.

But on the other hand, I don’t want to turn into one of those wackos who goes to the emergency room every time he needs a Band-Aid. They’ll prescribe antibiotics, eventually they’ll stop working, then one day I’ll be sixty and I’ll get pneumonia and the doctors will be like, “It’s really strange, it’s almost as if your body isn’t responding to the medicine at all. Oh well, better get your affairs in order.”

I know I’m spending way too much time in my head, and whether or not my wound is life threatening or not, the anxiety I’m feeling is very real. And the only way I know to cope with it is to keep chewing gum, which, like I said before, may or may not be making my jaw problem worse. Bill, you’re a lot older than me, do you have any advice? Would you go to doctor? Is it worth the copay? I’ll send you a picture. Does this look infected?

You know what? No. I take it back, the apology. When I closed the book on you the first time, I should have kept it closed. I feel like such an idiot, crawling back to you last week, apologizing. How about this for an apology? I’m sorry that I’m not sorry anymore. Because yeah, this is it, for real Bill, we’re through.

Which is too bad for you, because I have so much more to write about. Like today, I had this whole idea about how I was going to write to you about the Knicks, about Phil Jackson, about the triangle offense. It’s not just a winning strategy for basketball. You can use the triangle offense to come out a winner in almost any day-to-day situation.

Like, say you’re at a restaurant, and you’re worried that you’re not getting enough attention from the waiter. The service is slow, his remarks to basic questions are caked with thinly concealed scorn. What do you do, complain to the manager? No, you grab two buddies and you mount a triangle offense. You order first, then the next guy, then the third, one after the other, giving the server not even a second to gain his footing.

“I’ll have a Coke.”

“Make that two Cokes.”

“Make it three.”

“You know what? I’ll actually have an iced tea.”

“Hold up, that sounds great, make mine iced tea also.”

“Same for me, three iced teas.”

Just around and around and around, it works everywhere, not just on the court, not just at restaurants. But at the mechanic. Every time you go to the shop you always wind up spending more money than you thought you’d have to. The shocks suddenly need replacing, or they want to scrub out the transmission, whatever that means. And what happens? You always wind up paying out the wazoo. Why? Because you’re but a single dot.

Bring along a friend and turn that dot into a line. And then find one more person and make three lines, and turn those three lines into a triangle. When the mechanic is looking under the hood, make sure that you’re all surrounding him from three equidistant points.

“How’s the viscosity on that oil?”

“What’s your opinion on tiptronic transmission?”

“Do you guys have any other air fresheners besides these cotton candy scented ones?”

It doesn’t matter if the questions are only loosely related to cars, just keep them coming, one after the other, and with three people, there’s just enough downtime in between to make sure you don’t stumble over your own words.

But whatever Bill, why am I even explaining this to you? You don’t care about the triangle offense. You don’t care about anything. Maybe it was a little premature of me, but back when I started writing these letters to you a few months ago, I went ahead and had bunch of business cards printed that said, “Staff writer: Grantland.” Do you know how stupid I look after I hand them out and people start asking for links to my work? “Well, you see, I’m not hired just yet …”

And yeah, I guess that’s not really your fault. Maybe I shouldn’t be projecting all of this negative energy your way, just because you haven’t somehow stumbled upon my web site. Yeah, actually, maybe I’m being too hard on you Bill. Maybe I owe you an apology …

No! Wait, that’s what I did last week. I thought you’d see it and tell me, “Rob, that was big of you, apologizing like that. We’re looking for big people like you to write for Grantland. Welcome aboard.” And it didn’t happen, and I just looked like even more of an idiot.

You know what I need? I need like two other writers, and we’ll start hitting Grantland with our own triangle offense. Is that cool Bill? Can I bring two of my friends to have jobs at Grantland with me? Because if the answer’s no, if you won’t bring all three of us on board, then you don’t get any of us. OK?

Not that I even want your stupid job anymore anyway. I can tell when I’m not wanted.

We just had a pretty big snowstorm here in New York. The night before it started coming down, the news was telling us to expect at least ten inches. And no, I didn’t get out and measure it or anything like that, but it looks like ten inches, I think. It’s a lot of snow, is what I’m getting at here. It’s a powdery type of snow though, not too dense, so it wasn’t that big of a deal to clean up.

Still, snow is snow, and I had to shovel. I actually got a ticket for not shoveling in front of my house the last time it snowed. Yeah, yeah, I know, I have like a million excuses, like I was working both the night of the last snowstorm and the night after. So it was like, I came home from work, I should have just shoveled right away, but I put it off for the next day. And of course I overslept, I was rushing to get ready for the following night at the restaurant. I told myself, tomorrow, definitely tomorrow. But the Department of Sanitation must have been thinking the same thing, tomorrow, we’re definitely giving that guy a ticket tomorrow.

This time around, I made sure, as soon as that last snowflake fell, I was outside with my shovel. As I was shoveling I thought, Bill, wouldn’t it be cool if we were next-door neighbors? I know you’re a busy guy, and so I’d totally get your walk if you were at work or something. I don’t know exactly where your job takes you these days, I mean, I don’t really know where you do your filming for ESPN. You write a lot about how you’re from Boston, but you don’t live there anymore do you?

Maybe if you moved to Queens, right next-door to me, it would be like a rude awakening, it would snow, you’d have to shovel. How long has it been since you’ve had to shovel a walk? Don’t worry about it too much though, I told you, I’d help out. And maybe you’d be walking home just as I was finishing up the path right to your front door. Would we have met yet? Like, maybe you’d have waved to me every now and then on your way out the door. But a conversation?

“Hey man, thanks a lot, I really appreciate the help. I’m Bill, by the way, I know we haven’t gotten a chance for any official introductions, but yeah, thanks again for the shoveling.”

I’d say, “Hey, Bill, no problem, any time man.” And then it would get tricky, because obviously I’d recognize you, you’re a pretty famous guy. But do I want to come across as too eager? Like, “Yeah, I know you, you’re Bill Simmons, you’re the Sports Guy, I read all of your stuff on Grantland, I actually have a blog where I write you a letter every week begging for a job as a full-time writer. Have you seen it? Have you read any of my letters? What do you think Bill, can I have a job?”

It might come off as a little too strong. Still, anything else, like if I pretended not to know who you are, “My name’s Rob. Nice to meet you … Bill? Did you say it was Bill? Or Phil?” and you’d have to reintroduce yourself, “Bill. Bill Simmons.” That’s cool, I mean, it would have the benefit of you thinking that you could let your guard down around me, you’d go to work in the morning, you’d be the Sports Guy, but you’d come home at night and you’d just be regular next-door neighbor Bill, hanging out with his new friend Rob, a nice guy who shoveled his sidewalk, plus the path leading to his door, all out of the goodness of his own heart, not looking for anything in return.

Which of course isn’t really true, which is why I’d hesitate to go down that route. What if we hit it off? What if we became good friends? You’d obviously start to ask me questions like, what do you do for a living Rob? And I’d have to be like, well Bill, since you asked, I’m an aspiring writer. What about you?

And you’d go into your whole, “Really? I’m a writer too. I’d love to look at your stuff.” Which, yeah, that would be great. Please, read my stuff Bill. But then you’d come across these letters, the whole Dear Bill Simmons column, and you’d see that not only did I know who you were all along, but maybe my generous acts of snow shoveling weren’t as selfless as they appeared.

You’d think, is anything that Rob’s said about himself true? I’d try to explain, that yes, I really am a nice guy, and also yes, I desperately want to write for Grantland. “You moving next-door to me, I couldn’t believe the luck, but I didn’t know how to handle the situation. So, I’m sorry Bill, I’m sorry for coming across as disingenuous, but I just really, really want to work for you. And I also really want to be great neighbors. And maybe friends. But we’ll take it slow. What do you say?”

I’m pretty confident that you’d see through to the real me. I’m a nice guy Bill. And although we’ll probably never be next-door neighbors, we could still be coworkers. You could totally be my boss. And while I won’t push the friendship thing, I won’t close the door on it completely. So maybe like after years of working for you, building up a professional relationship, one based on hard work and writing whatever you tell me to write, maybe we can think about being friends. But first things first. Offer me a job Bill. I’ll say yes. Ask me to shovel your walk. I’ll say no. You’ll say, “But I thought you’d do whatever I told you to do.” And I’ll say, “I can’t shovel your walk. Because I already did it.”

I haven’t heard back from you yet. You know, about that whole me-asking-you-for-a-job-at-Grantland thing. From last week. That’s cool, you probably haven’t seen it yet, you know, even though I sent you a link on Twitter. You probably don’t even check your own Twitter account. There have got to be so many random Internet people tweeting stuff to you all the time, statistically speaking, it’s unlikely that my tweet ever even showed up on your feed.

Although, I do wonder, about famous people, especially those active on the Internet. How could you not go through all of those comments? I’ll write something on this blog, and it’s all I can do to not sit here clicking refresh, over and over again, hoping that the “zero comments” button will change to “one comment,” and that it won’t be something from Eastern Europe, “I am thanking so much for to your kind and thoughtful opinion on this matter. Let me know if you’d be liking to buy several Gucci handbags at …”

If it were me, and I had all of these people sending me comments and questions, I wouldn’t be able to look away. I wouldn’t get any writing done. Maybe that’s why you’re a famous writer and I’m not. Maybe. Or maybe you have seen my pleas, my begging for some sort of a full-time writing gig at Grantland. Maybe you get tons of similar requests. How do you know I’m serious? Well, I am serious. Look, this is my second open letter to you. Maybe you still won’t think I really have what it takes to churn out long pieces on a regular basis. But you will, sooner or later, you’ve got to cave. Either that or you’ll block my tweets.

Hey Bill, I was talking with one of my coworkers, and I don’t even know how this came up really, but this guy mentioned how he really loves reading Phil Simmons on the Internet. I think it was something like a question, “Hey Rob, do you ever read Phil Simmons, you know, the Sports Guy?”

And of course I knew what he was getting at, he’d obviously mistakenly called you Phil instead of Bill. I don’t really know you, personally, so I can’t comment on how that would make you feel. But I have to imagine that it’s not the first time that somebody’s called you by the wrong name. Every once in a while someone will call me Bob or something like that and, yeah, even though Bob and Rob are technically derivatives of the same name, the error is all but identical. I’m not going to lie, it bothers me a little bit.

And so even though I don’t like engaging in random arguments with acquaintances at work, especially people that are just trying to shoot the shit with me, have a little friendly banter to pass the time, I thought about you, you’re a public figure now, maybe it’s one thing for a pre-famous Bill Simmons to let the occasional Phil-calling slide, but now? After all you’ve done to get your name out there, on the Internet, on TV?

No, Bill, you deserve better than that. You deserve respect. I respect you Bill. I put this guy in his place, immediately. I didn’t try to ease it into the conversation, like subtly trying to put “Bill” at the forefront of most of my sentences. I didn’t want to leave anything to confusion, OK, I didn’t want it to be like maybe he’d be thinking, man, why does Rob keep calling Phil Simmons Bill?

“Listen,” I told him, “It’s not Phil Simmons, it’s Bill Simmons.” And this guy paused, only for like half a second, obviously your first name wasn’t going to be the central subject of whatever it was he was trying to tell me, so he tried to continue, “Oh, OK, whatever. But anyway, I was reading this …”

And I stopped him again. I said, “No, it’s not OK, it’s not just whatever, this is Bill Simmons, OK, this isn’t just some guy or one of your friends that you’re telling me a story about, OK? If you want to talk to me about the Sports Guy, I mean, if you want to talk to anybody about the Sports Guy, just get his name right, at the very least, have some respect, his name is Bill.”

Then I walked away. Because seriously, fuck that guy, right? Phil Simmons, please. This is just a taste of what I can bring to the table as a full-time writer for Grantland. Not only would I be able to offer top-notch writing, but I could be like an enforcer, making sure that when people talk about the web site, when they talk about you, they’re doing it right. They’re not calling you Phil. Or Will. Or … I’m trying to think of other one-syllable names that rhyme with Bill, and I guess that’s it, Phil and Will. Or Jill, but that’s a girl’s name, and if anybody ever called you Jill, I’d go berserk.